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- 07 | LIVE FAST

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Eddie's last breath of air in Bangor was suffocating; his first breath of air in Derry was similar, but somehow felt more crippling. He hadn't been in that long of a car ride ever, and even though it was only two and a half hours, he kept finding reasons to stop just because he was terrified of either making a wrong turn or just full-out crashing the car. His mother was already upset enough as it was, he didn't need her screaming at him for something else. So he made stops every half hour until they finally reached their destination—

A shitty little flat in the middle of nowhere.

Eddie didn't complain, but he was pissed. He unpacked what he needed for the first night since it was already approaching the time he would normally go to bed on a Wednesday evening. They had left a lot earlier than planned when Eddie and his friends started a game of Monopoly in order to stall his inevitable departure, and since Eddie was driving, Sonia didn't have much of a choice but to wait it out.

"Eddie!" Speak of the devil. The brunette took a deep breath, setting his box down a bit more firmly than he had to and turning around to face his aggravated mother as she squeezed through the door.

"Yes?" He asked quietly, biting his tongue to refrain from getting snarky. He was exhausted, and already in a bad mood as it was. She finally squeezed herself through the door, tossing her purse onto the counter.

"I want you to take out what you need for tonight and to get ready tomorrow then to go to bed. You have school in the morning." She stomped off, steps sounding a lot more forceful than they had to be in his experiences in the same household as her. He glanced around the flat, scowling deeply. It was a single floor, dingy, and small. There were two bedrooms, one bathroom, a tiny kitchen and a television sitting in the corner with a couch that seemed to be the only new thing in the entire place.

He walked into his room to find a bed with no blankets. The mattress looked bare and lonely sitting on its wooden frame without any sheets or pillows. So Eddie tossed his pillow onto it and flopped down, easing himself into the cycle he had developed since his father's death. He would close his eyes, dozing off until he was on the brink of sleep, and then his mind would poke fun at him.

Hey, do you remember that? What about this? He was great, wasn't he?

Eddie would lay awake for hours going through every possible memory he could have. If he ran out, which didn't often happen but did on occasion, he would switch to making up his own memories. His personal favorite was the one where he got home from the library to discover that everything was fine, and he showed his father the music that Ella had given him, and they listened together for hours.

Even after he knew it was time to get up, he would think. He must have dozed off at some point, because it felt a lot shorter than the night was, and Stan and Mike hadn't said anything, but he was exhausted regardless. He dragged himself out of bed and walked into their bathroom, which admittedly wasn't as bad as it could be, and locked the door behind him so he could take a shower. He had left a towel on the rack the night before in anticipation of that morning, so he shed his clothes from the day before which he had 'slept' in, turning on the water and checking the pressure. It was a little lousy, but at least it worked.

His shower was long, and most of it was spent thinking, replaying the scene of that night in his head over and over. The real memory was what always seemed to stick when he wasn't trying to sleep. Flashing lights, a rapidly beating heard, his father being carried out on a stretcher with hardly any color in his face and his arm dangling limply off the edge. A bike clattering to the ground, footsteps pounding against the asphalt as he ran after the retreating ambulance. Explaining to the remaining police officers that it was his father, panicked outburst and questions left unanswered as he was allowed into the car to meet his father there.